


in the heaving heat of the animals

by jamesstruttingpotter



Series: burn your love into the ground [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, lmao idk!!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 18:57:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17986775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamesstruttingpotter/pseuds/jamesstruttingpotter
Summary: “Who was she?”His head jerks around to meet her eyes; her expression is smooth, unruffled. “Who was who?”“Don’t insult my intelligence, Blake.”A sharp burst of pain alerts him to the fact that he’s biting the inside of his cheek. “Partner back at the 100th,” he finally says.Amalia’s head tips to the side, lips pursing, and he’s not so out of practice that he can’t recognize an interrogation face when he sees one. “That’s it?”He lets out a breath, doesn’t wonder why it feels like he’s been holding it for 3 months. “That’s it.”





	in the heaving heat of the animals

**Author's Note:**

> a bellamy POV (plus some missing scenes) of the prior work in this series because this AU and these characters wouldn't! leave! me alone!
> 
> it'd probably be best for you to read the prior work first - this won't make too much sense otherwise.
> 
> anyway!! here we go!!!

He gets back to the apartment at nearly three in the morning and immediately unlocks the small safe in the closet to pull out his real phone. The leather case is tacky against his sweaty palm as he turns it on, mind both racing from adrenaline and blurred with alcohol. As soon as the Apple logo fades, replaced by his niece’s laughing face, he swipes it unlocked to open the Phone app.

 _Clarke Griffin (emergency contact)_ stares back at him in black and white.

An all-too-familiar keen edge of desperation has him clicking on the name.

Her contact photo is one that he took a few years ago before their first precinct holiday party, when she’d wanted to see how her dress looked in pictures and he’d gotten there a couple minutes too early to pick her up. It’s not necessarily a photo taken during good times - in the early days of their partnership, trust had been as rare as a signed confession - but something about the curve of her smile in that moment has always stuck with him. Six years ago it had been a promise of things to come; lately it had been a sign of how far they’ve gotten.

It’s only been two hours but he thinks back to tonight for the millionth time, how the sudden flood of white light on the dance floor had caught his eye and dragged his gaze downward, away from Amalia and Jack and to a leaning figure in smoke grey. He’d known immediately, somehow, would swear on his life that every curl of her hair had been calling his name, and her face when she had turned around had threatened to hold his breath for ransom.

For a split second, Bellamy feels the curious sensation of falling as his self-control falters, as he imagines hearing her voice for the first time in three months.

In the next moment, he’s turning off the phone and putting it back into the safe, hands shaking.

* * *

“You look like shit,” is how Amalia greets him the next afternoon, shoving a cup of coffee into his hands. She’s chosen a table between a loud group of college kids discussing last night’s activities and a serious-looking man with huge headphones audibly blasting EDM. He winces at her too-loud voice before taking a long pull from the to-go mug.

“Anything happening?” he asks her, keeping his gaze on the bustle of people on the other side of the coffeeshop window. A couple of them give him startled looks; it takes him a moment to remember the bruise on his face, a complement to the tugging pain that’s taken up residence around his ribs.

He can feel her eyes appraising him as she takes in his mood. “It’s been going slowly. Pike’s asking you to go along with it - Dante is notoriously cagey.”

“So what was Jack, a test?”

“More like them putting a feeler out,” she replies, one hand curling around her own mug. “They’ll probably follow up if they’re interested, and I can’t imagine they’re not. Intel says they’re having a hard time getting traction on their own.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s hard to start a prostitution ring when you don’t have the FBI’s resources to help you,” he says, and she frowns.

“Remember, we’re trying to get them before we have to provide bodies as proof.”

“Yeah, I get it.” His tone is maybe sharper than he intended and he rubs at his face, ignores the twinge from the fading black eye. “Sorry, I just - I don’t do much other than review the dossiers we get.”

“Bored?”

“Yeah,” he says, humorless laugh escaping. “No one makes movies about all the boring shit undercover work entails.”

There’s a pause during which Bellamy reflexively checks the front exit, the back door to the kitchens, and the two cameras posted in opposing corners. Amalia’s gaze is heavy on his shoulders. “You need to relax,” she tells him finally.

“I’m relaxed,” he mutters.

“Who was she?”

His head jerks around to meet her eyes; her expression is smooth, unruffled. “Who was who?”

“Don’t insult my intelligence, Blake.”

A sharp burst of pain alerts him to the fact that he’s biting the inside of his cheek. “Partner back at the 100th,” he finally says.

Amalia’s head tips to the side, lips pursing, and he’s not so out of practice that he can’t recognize an interrogation face when he sees one. “That’s it?”

He lets out a breath, doesn’t wonder why it feels like he’s been holding it for 3 months. “That’s it.”

She doesn’t push.

* * *

He meets Gina as Blake and it’s the only time it’s felt like more than a half-lie. She slides him a bright blue drink with a friendly grimace. He tears his eyes away from the entrance to look up at her from his barstool, the thumping bass of the club’s soundtrack re-registering in his mind.

“What’s this for?” he half-shouts, and she shrugs.

“Look like you need it,” she replies, before she’s called away by another patron flagging her down.

She’s the one who fixes him with a curious look several weeks later. “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this,” she says, only half-joking. The corner of her mouth is tucked into a smile under the flashing green lights.

“I thought I could do this,” he replies, and he can tell by her expression that he’s being more honest than either of them expected. “But... it’s hard to watch.”

Both of them turn to look at the lounge ahead of them, women leading patrons to hidden entryways and alcoves as sultry vocals filter through speakers.

“Let me guess,” Gina says. “A sister?”

“Mother,” Bellamy says, and feels an old, bitter taste at the back of his throat.

“I’m sorry about that.” Her voice is genuine, but there’s an edge to it that has him meeting her gaze. “But there are women who choose this life because they want it, and those are the only type of women we hire here. Feeling sorry for them would be more disrespectful in their eyes than anything their clients might want from them.”

It’s this that sticks with him when Amalia knocks on his door weeks later, an unfamiliar woman in a long puffer coat behind her. He rubs grit out of his eyes as he lets them in, the cold metal of his handgun pressed against his hip.

“What?” he asks, brusque from exhaustion, but Amalia lets it go with barely a raised eyebrow.

“This is Echo,” she says, gesturing at the woman. “You’re bringing her with you when you meet the Wallaces tonight. We’ve worked with her before,” she adds, sensing Bellamy’s immediate objection.

“There’s no way I’m bringing an untrained asset to - “

“No, there’s no way Cage and Dante are going to believe a word out of your mouth if you don’t bring a girl,” Echo interrupts. “And what are you gonna do, convince FBI lady here to dress up like a prostitute?”

Bellamy rubs a hand down his face to hide his expression; his bad mood follows them to seven hours later, a dim basement bar.

“Interesting,” says Cage, drink in one hand as he circles the both of them. Bellamy is half a step behind Echo, keeping a close eye on Dante as the older man sits, reclining, opposite them. He knows of two men at the only exit, a small rectangular window ten feet off the ground notwithstanding, and another three scattered about the room as Cage appraises them.

There’s a sudden flicker of twin movement out of the corner of his eye and he looks in time to see Echo’s chin rise an inch higher as Cage’s fingers stretch out to stroke her collarbone.

“Don’t,” Bellamy snaps, too sharp, and feels his pulse thrum to life in his throat as Cage turns to frown at him.

“Why not?” Dante asks, more curious than demanding.

“She’s an asset,” Bellamy replies, un-sticking the words from the back of his throat, and Echo looks almost relieved. “What kind of businessman would I be if I gave my assets away for free?”

There’s a half-beat of silence before Dante inclines his head slightly. Cage drops his hand, scowling, and Bellamy tries not to feel the shiver of disgust that makes its way down his spine.

* * *

The first thing he registers when he wakes up is the unfortunately familiar scorch of a gunshot wound blazing across his shoulder. There’s a hand on his chest keeping him steady against what feels like a wooden table.

“Hey,” says Lovejoy’s voice from above him. “If you’re going to get up, do it slowly.”

Bellamy grits his teeth and hauls himself up, blinking as mint green walls and fine china cabinets swim into focus.

“Wallace safe house,” the other man says, answering the unspoken question, and Bellamy reaches up to feel the gauze that pads his shoulder. “Yeah, boss says sorry about that. They’re talking to our guy now to straighten things out.”

“Couldn’t have gotten things straight this morning?” he asks, voice rough with disuse, and Lovejoy shrugs.

“Kitchen’s through there if you want water,” he says instead.

The ground feels unsteady under his feet when he stands up. He’s grateful when Lovejoy’s phone chimes in his pocket, distracting the man from his discomfort. A glass of water suddenly feels optional; Bellamy leans against the dining table behind him and rolls his shoulders back experimentally instead, wincing at the fresh ripple of pain that zips across his nerves.

“Sounds like some girl’s outside giving Sam some trouble,” Lovejoy says, and Bellamy grunts. A new patch of sunlight falls on the carpet in front of him as Lovejoy lifts a blind to peer outside. “Jesus, she’s just some dumbass blonde. I bet they’re scaring the shit out of her.”

It takes too long for him to put the pieces together. Once he does, fear rips him from the table and pushes him to the front door, would pulsing with every heartbeat.

The air is bitingly cold against his bare arms as he steps out onto the porch, immediately locating the beat-up car to his left. He recognizes the dented hood, the silvery-grey paint, the way the license plate hangs slightly crooked on the bumper.

The bolt of recognition that goes through him as her gaze meets his feels like a second gunshot.

It’s over too quickly, the sound of the engine loud on the silent street as she drives straight past him. The half-second glimpse of her from through the passenger window gives him a drawn expression, a too-pale face, wisps of blonde against cheeks gaunter than he remembers. There’s almost no time for relief before Sam and his buddy stride past him, mumbling about stubborn bitches, and Bellamy doesn’t think it’s just the arctic chill that’s making it hard to breathe.

The four of them leave the safe house later that afternoon, everyone sick of Bellamy’s frenetic inability to keep still, and he hasn’t made up his mind on what to do before the Wallaces demand his presence for another numbing night of alcohol and strobe lights. “I’m sorry about your shitty morning,” Cage says after a couple shots, and almost sounds sincere about it. Bellamy shakes his head and tries to get suitably wasted, if only to dull the frantic stream of consciousness that keeps fixating on piercing blue eyes in late morning sunshine.

It doesn’t work.

Somewhere around one in the morning he takes off for a cigarette break, feeling Cage’s drunk gaze heavy on his back, and lights up against the brick exterior of their third club. Neon lights for pawn shops and bodegas burn against his retinas as smoke crawls down his throat, and he watches the line for the venue fight with pedestrians as they pass by.

He’s about to head back in when a familiar awning catches his eye.

“Best macarons in the city,” Clarke’s voice says in his head, and Bellamy can almost see her grin in his head.

“Of course you’d know where to find stupid French pastries,” he’d responded to her then, and she’d shoved her elbow into his ribcage.

The bakery is a block from her place.

He’s stubbing out the cigarette without a second thought and striding away, around the corner and back into a different man’s life. The building looks exactly the same, huddled behind heaps of old snow, and he’s entered the front door code and pressed her floor button in the elevator before he can weigh the potential cost this will have on the Bureau.

He gets to her door and almost reaches for his keychain before realizing; instead, he picks the lock with hasty efficiency and slips inside, darkness settling around him as he takes in the familiar, long-ago sight of her living room.

Something almost like regret unspools in his stomach right before a slight figure draws a pistol on him.

“What _the fuck_ are you doing here?” she says, and the fear he’s been nursing all day rears its head again.

“I could’ve asked you the same question,” he replies, and sees the decision flit across her face half a second before she says, “This is my apartment.”

The roiling in his chest curdles into anger, hot and sudden. “This isn’t a fucking joke, Clarke, what the hell were you thinking this morning?” he demands. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed!”  
Her expression is one he hasn’t seen in years. “ _I_ could’ve gotten _myself_ killed? What happened last night? Your shoulder is - “

“I’m doing my job,” he replies, worst case scenarios flitting through his mind unbidden. “Not hanging around active gang territory with no license to be there in any official capacity!”

“I was fucking _worried_ , Bellamy!”

He almost can’t believe that she expects that argument to work on him after the last few hours. “Worried?” _Clarke shot in her car, Clarke sold for organs, Clarke tortured for information she doesn’t have._ “As if that fucking excuses anything you just did - “

And now she’s yelling at him, tone and tenor of her voice achingly familiar in all the worst ways, and he suddenly can’t find the words he needs to convince her that it would be better for both of them if she let him go, just for a few months.

Instead, he stands there in the early hours of the morning, blatantly dropping his assignment’s duties to look at how her mouth moves as she shouts, how her hair is falling around her shoulders, how the circles under her eyes are darker than he remembers. She’s skinnier, he realizes dimly, and exhaustion has settled into the fine lines around her eyes in a way that makes him almost resent the kinds of promises they were on the cusp of making to each other before he left.

“You shouldn’t waste your time worrying,” is what his thoughts manifest as, voice rough in the darkness, and he’s almost certain that this is when he’ll lose her.

Instead, her head comes to nestle under his chin, weight of her palms steady against his shoulder blades. He breathes in the smell of her, sleep-warm and weary, and fights the urge to look for blood under his fingernails.

* * *

So he gets jumped by the Wallaces, in the end.

“ - Father thought you were so _noble_ ,” he hears when consciousness finally decides to return to his body. Cage is a few steps away, eyes wild under the fluorescents, and the coppery-red of his knuckles doesn’t make sense until Bellamy feels hot liquid drip down his nose, across his lips.

A cough produces more blood, slimy with spit, almost obscene in the sound it makes as it hits the ground.

“That shit you pulled with the hooker you brought around - which, sloppy, Blake. There’s no fucking pimp who says shit like that, no _man_ \- but Father loved it, said you had _real integrity_ \- “ Another punch to the stomach and he doubles over, gasps for air almost inaudible over Cage’s continued rant.

Time slips from the straight line it usually walks, replaced with an insistent ringing in his ears and intermittent starbursts of pain. Some distant part of him, the part that’s trained for situations like this, the part that watched Clarke (just Griffin, then) ace drill after drill at the Academy and was determined to beat her at least _once_ , tells him that he’s still alive for a purpose, that there’s something Cage must want from him that he won’t be able to get if he’s dead, that he can stay alive if he can figure out what that something is.

The problem is that he’s having a hard time concentrating on anything that’s not the darkness fading into his peripheral vision.

“I’m going to beat it out of you,” Cage’s voice says, far away and sharp, “and then I’m going to bring _her_ here and have you watch.”

He thinks there’s shouting downstairs a little after that. Cage suddenly disappears, and Bellamy gives into the numbness for a while.

He wakes again to frantic fingers against his cheek, a face that has to be a hallucination. For the first time, he feels panic sluggishly feed into his chest, a sense of impending danger that isn’t assuaged by the look of relief on her face.

It feels like it happens in the space of a blink: one second they’re alone, the next Cage has the a gun pointed straight at her head.

“Clarke,” Bellamy says, fighting the sense of desperation that threatens to choke him. “Clarke, run.”

Cage’s voice is white noise in his ears. He sees her dive almost before she moves, watches the bullet drive home.

He doesn’t see her get back up.

A lifetime passes before Miller is crouching in front of Clarke’s body, and there’s no time to revel in the first sight of his friend in months. “Miller, please tell me she’s - “

“Clipped her side,” the other man responds, not meeting his gaze. He’s already putting pressure on the wound. “She called the EMTs when she found you. You need to hold still. You’re in bad shape, man.”

As if on cue, uniforms swarm the room. He can’t focus suddenly, too many bodies and noises in the way, and frustration builds into panic in his chest. “Someone get him medical attention, _now_ ,” he hears Miller saying, and the restraints around his wrist snap almost immediately.

“Officers down,” says a voice on his right, and someone’s trying to get him to stand up and walk away.

“ _No_ , I’m staying right - _Miller_ \- “

And Miller’s there, sudden, palms covered in a wet shade of rust that he can’t look at right now. “Bellamy,” he says, and the sound of his familiar voice saying his name is enough to give him pause. “You need to get out of here. You’re severely injured, and you need to be checked out. I’m going to stay with her and make sure she’s okay. Okay? You need to trust me.”

He can only barely see blonde hair splayed out across grey concrete now, behind a crowd of paramedics surrounding her. He tears his gaze away to meet Miller’s. His eyes are understanding, steady.

The paramedic’s hand on his shoulder is firm. “I trust you,” Bellamy says, hoarse, and lets himself be taken away.

* * *

“I don’t blame you for that,” Clarke says later, brows furrowed in disbelief. “Bellamy, you had been brutalized for hours. I would have been so pissed if you refused medical treatment to help Miller - what, put pressure on my wound? That’s a one person job. Come on.”

It’s days after the warehouse ordeal, less than 24 hours after their last FBI debrief, and they’re eating takeout in her living room with the comforting sounds of Brooklyn Nine-Nine fading into the background. Clarke’s wearing a slightly too-big APD shirt and rolled-up sweatpants, hair bunched up in an old plastic clip at the back of her head, and he’s still trying to figure out how to tell her that every time he had thought of her, this had been the image he kept coming back to.

“Yeah, well,” he says, and leaves it at that. She snorts and digs a large chunk of chicken out of his carton.

“Hey,” he starts after a few moments. The curve of her smile as she turns to him reminds him of the safe in Blake’s apartment, of staring at pixels in the dark, of Amalia’s voice asking what a woman in a silver dress and white light meant to him, really. “I love you,” he finishes, and watches her smile bloom into something he knows he wants to spend the rest of his life figuring out.

“Me too,” she says, warm. There’s a half-beat of silence, save an errant explosion from the screen in front of them, before her expression turns a corner into teasing. “I love me too.”

“You little shit,” he says, kicking a foot at the leg draped over his thigh, and her laughter carries them through the rest of the episode.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks guys!! comments and kudos are bellarke eye sex during an undercover op


End file.
